


Run Through the Steam

by Ertal77



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - War, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 07:47:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9113395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ertal77/pseuds/Ertal77
Summary: Captain Noiz commands a cargo airship with first need supplies in times of war, besides a bit of smuggling. Aoba runs a soup-kitchen with his granny and tries to take care of the less fortunate inhabitants of Midorijima's Old District. Steampunk AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaleidoscope13579](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaleidoscope13579/gifts).



> My rather delayed Secret Santa gift for Kaleidoscope13579!
> 
> You said you like AUs, and I had this idea that wouldn't leave me alone for months... It turned out longer than I expected, hence the delay! I'm really sorry, but I hope you like it!

The airship carefully banked in order to fit between the tall, dilapidated buildings of a narrow street. Noiz adjusted the spyglass, searching for something in the misty evening, and he suddenly smirked. Two of the men in his crew elbowed each other and grinned.

“So, is the guy with the blue hair on duty today, Captain?” one of them dared to ask.

Noiz raised his head from the spyglass, startled, and turned to look at his subordinate with a slight frown.

“What are you talking about, Clear? I wasn’t looking at _him_.”

All the men in the cockpit tried to suppress an amused grin, succeeding just in part. Noiz glared at them, letting his icy gaze rest on one after the other, until all of them avoided his eyes and pretended to be busy with the landing preparations.

“Yeah… Whatever you say,” one of them mumbled softly.

The words reached Noiz’ ears, of course, but he wasn’t really angry at them. He turned his attention to the spyglass again: the young man with long, blue hair was giving out plates with a smoky soup to the queue of people in front of him, mostly children and whole families. _‘I should be tougher with my crew, what a lack of respect…’_ he thought, ‘ _I spend too much time with them; they shouldn’t be able to read me so well’._

“Hey.” He was struck by a sudden inspiration. A slow, wide grin spread through his face, making his men raise an eyebrow in expectation. “Clear, open the steam tank to the maximum.”

“What for?? We are almost landing, we don’t need more force…”

“Let’s play a little prank on them,” Noiz answered in his soft voice. “Come on, it will be fun!”

The others objected, but without much heat. They knew once their captain was decided on something, arguing was futile.

They let go steam, a great amount of it, forcing the motor, and in a moment their ship was completely wrapped in smoke, a huge mass of steam crossing the skies between the run-down buildings of Midorijima’s old district.

As they approached their target area, a wide old market place now closed down due to war, the people queuing for food or already eating their meal started to scream at seeing them. Almost everybody started to scatter away to find any kind of shelter. The frightening state only lasted a couple of minutes, of course, since the ship was actually starting her landing maneuvers and soon it was pretty obvious for everybody that they weren’t under attack; especially when the smoke cleared up and they could discern the familiar shape of the Ruff Rabbit, their usual supply airship.

Noiz kept studying the effects of his little prank through his spyglass, ignoring the mass of unknown people and focusing on Aoba, the boy with the blue hair, who went from petrified by fear to running around trying to catch the smaller unattended children to hide them from the sight of the ship; and then, when he finally recognized the ship and realization hit him, his face contorted in anger and turned beetle red. Noiz chuckled and shook his head in amusement.

The blue haired boy was still standing there, in the middle of the rather chaotic former market place, with a toddler in his arms and other two small kids clutching at his legs. The ship hatch opened up and Noiz jumped down, followed by his men, who were already carrying wood boxes and sacks filled with food and other first need items. The two kids hid behind Aoba, without letting go of him, but the guy stood his ground, glaring at the approaching captain. His eyes shone with fury, and Noiz didn’t make any effort to hide his amusement.

“What was that for?” Aoba asked angrily, as soon as Noiz was close enough to hear him. “I’m glad you find us entertaining, but for some of this people this was their only meal of the day, and you have ruined it!”

‘ _Tsk, so dramatic’_ , Noiz thought, but he ran his eyes through the Midorijima residents gathered at the market, and although the huge stewpot was still right at its place, he saw some people had dropped their plates in their fear and haste to run and cover themselves, so there was stew splattered on the ground all over the place. He sighed.

“Are you looking for a discount?” he asked, rather rudely, frowning at Aoba and at the general direction of the warehouse that served as soup-kitchen. The kids screamed and ran away from them. “Alright, there! You can have one extra sack of carrots. Happy now?”

He took a small sack of vegetables and pushed it onto Aoba’s free arm. The young man blinked in surprise and placed the scared kid he was still carrying on the floor, patting his back reassuringly before the boy ran to join the other children. He studied the sack while biting his lower lip. He looked as if he was struggling to find the right thing to say.

“I suppose now I have to say ‘thank you’, right?” he mumbled in the end, although his tone was far from grateful.

Noiz shrugged and turned his back to him.

“That’s not my business… You can keep your ‘thank you’ to yourself, for all that I mind.”

Aoba gritted his teeth and howled:

“Oiiiiiii… You!”

The elder lady who ran the soup-kitchen grunted and put herself between the two of them.

“Enough! Aoba, stop it already; don’t you have better things to do? Go chopping those vegetables before they grow roots!”

The young man huffed, but said nothing. A quick glare to Noiz and he turned to the temporary kitchen to unpack the goods.

“Captain,” the old lady asked loudly, “tell us about the situation… Not only tv, now coil reports have stopped as well…”

Around them the small crowd nodded, gathering closer to Noiz and the old woman.

“We are incommunicado!”

“Only the radio station is working now, but it just repeats the same reassuring crap the government dictates, again and again!”

Noiz sighed, feeling suddenly tired. We wasn’t a social person, and he didn’t enjoy being the focus of attention. Especially when that meant having to bring bad news.

“Well, the capital is still under siege, and our waters constantly raided. All the communications have been attacked: television antennas, internet servers, everything. Our GPS doesn’t work so our army is literally blind, but their airships seem to have us located all the time.” He caught with the corner of his eye one of his men waving him to stop; around him, all the faces started to show despair in different ways. He cleared his throat and added: “But our army still resists, and they are planning a counterattack. The problem right now is how difficult it is to get our hands on the fresh food that must be rotting somewhere, in a huge warehouse in the north perhaps. Due to that, the prices have raised again.”

He produced a bill out one of his pockets and presented it to the old lady. The woman pulled a face at reading the sum and passed the paper to Aoba, who was trying to peek at it from behind her shoulder. The young man’s eyes widened in disbelief.

Noiz felt admittedly uncomfortable. Since the war and the international siege started, the government set up a system of points instead of money to buy food and first need items: the more productive a person was considered, the more points they earned each day. That system left children and elder people rather helpless. Noiz guessed the volunteers who ran the soup-kitchen must collect the points from many people in the neighborhood, who would have to subsist only on rice otherwise. Joining all their points they could at least produce a decent meal for everybody, besides medical supplies.

But it was rather obvious in Aoba’s and the old woman’s faces that the raise had taken them by surprise, and they didn’t have enough points to pay for his load. Noiz looked around, searching for inspiration.

“Hey, there’s still some stew left, right? My men and I are a bit tired of canned food and, to be honest, our cook is not what you would call brilliant…”

“Hey!” Clear’s hurt voice complained from behind the crowd. “You guys always praise my meals!”

“Sssshhh… Let him talk”, another member of the crew asked, with a grin.

“…So if you have enough stew for five, we could give you a discount in exchange for a hot home-made meal”, Noiz concluded.

“Ha! That’s a deal!” the old woman exclaimed, pulling Noiz’ forearm with energy.

The Captain let the woman take him to the smoky pot, which smelled truly tasty, and a moment later his men and himself were carrying a hot bowl each one to a nearby table.

“That comment was so meaaaaan, Captain!” Clear whined as soon as they sat.

Noiz said nothing, focusing on gulping down his food as fast as possible while his crew blew to their spoons trying to cool the stew down.

“It was a well intentioned lie, Clear”, one of the men explained with a smile. “You know we love your cooking!”

“Oh, really?”

The other two grinned and nodded with enthusiasm, but Clear was only satisfied once Noiz himself gave a little nod followed by an impatient grunt. The Captain ignored his crew and the bright smile of his cook and stood up as soon as he was done, carrying his bowl to the table set for that purpose. Aoba was standing behind it, emptying the bowls and passing them to the volunteers who were doing the washing up. Noiz studied the cute figure he cut, with his pony tail, long black apron and all, until the young man got sick of being stared at and faced him.

“What.”

“I’ve got another box in my ship. A private order. Has someone left something for me?”

Aoba stopped frowning and wiped his hands on his apron.

“Oh, now that you mention it… Wait a moment!”

He came back from the back store a minute later with an envelope. Two of the members of the crew, who had already finished their meal, came carrying a heavy looking metal box. They placed it beside the table, next to Aoba, who didn’t miss a moment before opening the lid and peeking inside.

“What’s this? _Alcohol_? Really?”

Noiz shrugged and counted the money inside his envelope.

“There’s also a whole ham and a bit of imported food… Some people want to keep their lifestyle despite the war.”

Aoba’s face was red with fury.

“I thought you worked for the army! But in fact you are nothing but a smuggler! No wonder you can go _offering discounts_ , you can afford being generous with all the money you are earning! And meanwhile we have to work hard and ration our food in order to get _antibiotics_!”

“Tsk.”

Noiz turned and started walking towards his ship, pulling his cap down firmly.

“They will come for the box today! Take care of it!” he shouted back. “Come on, guys, time to go back to the Ruff Rabbit!”

Clear and the other guy who were still finishing their meal rushed to clear their table. When the cook approached Aoba with their dirty plates, the young man was still huffing and glaring at the Ruff Rabbit, whose captain had just disappeared inside the hatch. Clear hesitated a moment before starting to speak to him.

“Hmmm… Don’t get so upset with him… Captain Noiz is actually a nice person.”

“Oh, yes, I can tell that!” Aoba smirked.

“No, I don’t think you can, sorry.”

Aoba turned his focus to the young Ruff Rabbit cadet at last, still frowning.

“…It was just a manner of speaking, you know?”

“Oh! Sorry, I’m not good at picking that… I just wanted to let you know, Captain Noiz perhaps it’s not your classic honorable air force captain, but he is decent, and a good guy at heart. It’s just that joining the army wasn’t his choice. He owned the Ruff Rabbit and ran it as a cargo airship since way before the war began, but once the international siege started, the government requisitioned all the civil airships available… So his options were turning the Ruff Rabbit into an air force ship or losing her.”

“Oh.” Aoba pulled a face but his frown smoothed a bit.

“…And he is doing a great job! If the commanders weren’t as fond of him as they are, they wouldn’t allow him the smuggling.”

“So they know? Your… bosses?”

Clear shrugged, as if apologizing.

“Clear! Are you coming or would you rather stay in Midorijima tonight?”

Noiz’ voice rumbled in the marketplace. Clear smiled widely to Aoba before waving goodbye to him. The young man waved back to him and watched him jump into the ship. The hatch closed immediately and the propellers started to release steam. Aoba sighed and went back to work.

* * *

 

A week later, Aoba was running across the alleys of the Old District, trying to avoid the main streets of the neighborhood, since the sirens announcing an air raid had sounded a while ago. _‘They must be wrong… or the airship would have already appeared!’_ , he thought, not really convinced. Well, if they didn’t see him no harm would be done, right? He tried to melt with the shadows and go faster. He needed to pick a certain medicine from the marketplace’s storeroom, and it was urgent.

When he was starting to think the enemy ship would surely have passed by, a rumbling noise reached his ears. He jumped back, gasping, and heard the familiar twang of a steam motor. _‘Wait! Not a motor… but two!’_ Two airships? That was highly uncommon. As the vibrating noise approached the area, he dared to peek out from his hideout. The two ships were entering the marketplace square, one after the other… and then the second one shot. Aoba’s heart jumped in his throat at recognizing the first ship, now heeling over dangerously close to the ground: it was the Ruff Rabbit, without a doubt!

The cargo airship fought to get steady again, but there was a trail of black smoke going out from her motor, and her usual grumbling sound has turned into a pitiful, coughing one. The second ship shot again, but she remained high and quite far, not venturing herself into that area of narrow alleys where she could get caught or trapped, since it was bigger than the cargo one.

A dark silhouette jumped from the Ruff Rabbit and ran towards the motor; Aoba recognized the captain at once. The rude guy was smutty with coal, and he climbed up the injured motor with a wrench and started to unscrew a fixed wheel. The enemy ship shot at him again, but it wasn’t close enough to reach him. Aoba found himself praying. The wheel came out, letting go a cloud of steam and pushing Noiz backwards. The boy fell down on his bum, and the enemy ship took the chance to target him again. This time he was at perfect view and the shot hit him on his side. Aoba covered his mouth to muffle a scream. The Ruff Rabbit heeled over but finally stabilized. The enemy kept shooting, although now the cargo blocked their view of her captain. _‘They will jeopardize the Ruff Rabbit again… But they surely don’t want to escape abandoning their captain to his fate…_ ’

He didn’t think anymore. Instead, he ran. He crossed the whole square, praying for the shadows of the evening would made him little to not visible, and when he was close enough he crouched below the Ruff Rabbit and pulled the bloodied body of the captain towards him. A quick look to his torso made him flinch: the guy needed a surgeon, and soon. The enemy shot again and the Ruff Rabbit tilted dangerously. A white-haired head with a leather cap peeked out from a small hatch.

“I’ve got him!” Aoba shouted. “I’m taking him to a surgeon!”

He wasn’t sure if the man had heard him or not, with the roar of the motor so close to them, but the guy gave him a thumbs up and the ship started to move upwards. Aoba hid himself and the unconscious captain between two tall buildings, which were so close to each other that only one man would be able to walk by, and that supposing said man wasn’t too burly. The enemy ship shot once, twice, hitting the pebbled ground a meter from Aoba’s feet. Then they gave up and tacked to starboard, starting to chase the Ruff Rabbit instead.

Aoba let go the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. Holding the bloodied body of the captain in his arms, he opened his coil with a trembling hand.

“Granny? I might need a bit of help. Can you send someone to the marketplace to pick us up?”

* * *

 

Noiz opened his eyes with the unpleasant sensation of not knowing where he was. There was too much light to be in the Ruff Rabbit… and he hadn’t been in his apartment for weeks. He studied his surroundings with surprise: he was in a bedroom, lying on a single bed, the daylight poured through a big window… no, that was a balcony. He could only see a brick wall through the glass, though, so he was obviously in some kind of narrow alley… That could only mean…

“Ah, you are awake!”

Noiz’ gaze turned from the balcony to the door, where that attractive blue-haired guy was standing with a shy smile on his face. _‘So I was right. I’m in the Old District of Midorijima’_ , he thought. _‘But what the hell I am doing here, with him?’_

“You must be thirsty… Here, have some water.”

Aoba went closer and sat on the bed, with a glass of water in his hand. Noiz took it and swallowed the liquid down in a single gulp, with his eyes fixed on Aoba’s face. He coughed a bit; it was true his throat felt dry and raspy. Much better now.

“Try not to move much… My granny had to do some surgery to your pancreas, and also your lower rib was a bit splintered…”

Noiz blinked twice and touched the bandages that covered his torso firmly.

“Your granny?”

“Yes. Tae. You know, the woman who runs the soup-kitchen.”

 _‘Oh. So the old lady is his grandmother.’_ He closed his eyes, feeling suddenly tired.

“It’s better if you rest here for some days… You shouldn’t move at all until the injury is fully closed. I’ll bring you some light food now.”

Noiz felt the change of weight on the bed, signaling Aoba was standing up, and caught the young man’s wrist before he could leave.

“Where’s the Ruff Rabbit?”

“She managed to escape. The other ship chased her, but I think your men had quite a lead by then. Besides, she is smaller and lighter and can get into narrow spots.”

Noiz nodded and let him go. He closed his eyes again and slipped into a light sleep before Aoba could even leave the room.

The next days were incredibly boring. Tae came to his room twice a day to change his bandages and check on his wound. She told him his ship had come to the market place the next day of the attack, with part of their usual load, and that his crew was informed about his situation and would keep on doing their tasks without their leader for as much time as it was needed for him to heal. Noiz protested at once: he wanted to go back to the Ruff Rabbit. He could lie and rest there as well as in that house; no, better, in fact! But the old lady wouldn’t have any of it.

“Yes, because running errands, jumping up and down and risking your life in the dumbest possible way is exactly what you need right now, sure…” she grunted. “You will stay here at least for, say, ten days. Then, if you behave and your wound looks better, I will let you go wherever you want. But now before.”

“But…!”

The small woman shushed him and turned towards the door.

“Not a word more! You are lucky my grandson rescued you. We are the only surgery you would be able to find in all Midorijima right now, so you should be more grateful, young man!”

Noiz nodded, and said _thank you_ through gritted teeth. What a stubborn woman. She had even convinced _his_ crew not to attend any of his complains, so they wouldn’t come to the rescue, no matter how he pleaded to them on his coil.

So the only remaining things for him to do were playing old games on his coil… and wait until lunch times to see Aoba. He would always appear with a bright smile and a tray with hot food. Tae was a really good cook, even better than that airhead on his ship, but the meal wasn’t the best part of it, of course. Aoba usually sat down on the bed and kept him company while he ate.

“You know”, Aoba told him one day, “I will be actually happy when you are good to go as well, since you are using my bedroom.”

Noiz raised his tiny eyebrows in surprise. He hadn’t wondered before whose bedroom was that, but it made sense, now that he thought about it.

“Where are you sleeping now?”

Aoba shrugged with a smile.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t seriously complaining! I’m in the sitting room with the children. It’s good, this way I can keep them under control!”

The children. Right. Noiz had learned that Tae and Aoba took in a number of kids who had lost their parents during the attacks or were fighting at the war front. They were a noisy presence in the house, but luckily they left Noiz more or less alone since he was injured. Noiz usually didn’t like children, but right then he was so bored that he wasn’t against a bit of reading and playing time with the brats, so he didn’t tell Tae when the kids paid him a visit.

“You know, you can share this bedroom with me. It’s a shame you have to give up on it; it’s your place after all.”

“Haha! Well, you need the peace and intimacy more than me right now, and anyway there’s only one bed.”

Noiz sat up a bit and opened the bedcovers, patting the small free surface of the bed invitingly.

“We can share that too… See? There’s place for you!”

Aoba stood up and raised an eyebrow.

“You are really something… Well, I’ll leave now, my tasks are piling up.”

Noiz let go a dramatic sigh and stared at the young man while he tidied the side table and put everything on the tray.

“You don’t take me seriously, I see..”

“As if!”

“But it was a serious offer.”

Aoba tilted his head to look at Noiz, a light frown on his forehead.

“I can get you, I never know if you are joking or not… You always have that poker face on, and the same monotonous tone of voice!”

That comment actually irked Noiz.

“It’s not my fault, I was born like this”, he grunted with a frown. His slight annoyance at seeing Aoba leave increased, making him speak back without thinking first. “You know, I can’t get you either… I mean, I suppose your granny and you are expecting some kind of compensation for treating me and keeping me captive here, but those kids’ parents are not going to come back… What will you get from taking care of them, and also running a soup-kitchen for half the neighborhood?”

Aoba’s cheeks tinged in red and his eyes shone with fury.

“We are not doing it for the money, you dick! If you can’t understand why we do it, then there’s nothing I can say to make you grasp the concept of ‘having a heart’!”

“Oh, ppffft! If you have such a hero complex, you had better joined the army, instead of losing your time here!” Aoba said nothing, but he glanced aside. “Ah, wait a moment! It’s not that you don’t want to join the army, but that you can’t. You are one of us, right?” He pulled up the sleeve of his right arm, showing Aoba the copper glint of his biomechanical arm. The young man of course had seen it before, since he had helped changing his clothes and, in fact, Noiz never hid it when he was working; but he never imagined Aoba had an artificial limb as well. Where could it be? One of his legs, perhaps? He walked normally, but it was evident that it wasn’t his arms… “Where is it? Your leg?”

Aoba sighed and raised a bit the lower rim of his tight jeans over his right leg: where his sock ended, a metallic surface appeared, shiny and smooth, nothing like the reddish piece on Noiz. Blushing, Aoba covered it again after a moment.

“Don’t stare at it”, he whispered, avoiding Noiz’ eyes.

“Why? It works, and it’s nice.”

“Not nice at all… It’s ugly, metallic and fake.”

Noiz tilted his head and raised his metallic arm.

“Do you find my arm ugly, too?”

Aoba bit his lower lip with embarrassment.

“I didn’t want to say that… I’m sorry! No, of course I don’t find your arm ugly.”

“Then? Your leg isn’t, either. Show it to me… I want to see where it starts!”

Aoba’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.

“What?! No way in hell! Why would I do that?”

“And why not? Why do you hate that leg so much?”

“Because it makes me feel like a cripple! Are you happy now?”

Aoba closed his eyes, and Noiz betted he was counting up to ten in order to calm himself.

“Well, that biomechanical leg allows you live a normal life, plus let you out from the army, although you could have insisted a bit… You see it wasn’t a deterrent for me, yet perhaps owning an airship is more important to the army than having all your natural limbs… But Clear, our happy-go-lucky cook, has more than an artificial limb and he insisted until he managed to land on the air forces… So you in fact _chose_ to stay here in this decrepit neighborhood, air raided twice a week, where you could feel sorry for yourself and be a little useful to those nobody’s children while shaking that hot ass of yours in front of my nose.”

Aoba looked at him with eyes wide as saucers. His previous blush had spread throughout his neck and a vein quavered on his forehead. He got up in a snap, took the tray with shaking hands and turned to face the door.

“Wait!” Noiz exclaimed. “Why are you angry?”

Aoba turned his face to glare at him.

“Why, you ask? A better question would be why would you say such things…”

Noiz wondered for a moment what he could possibly say…

“Well… the last part was a compliment?”

“Ha! What the hell! You are rude, and crazy, and egotistic, and I’ve had enough of you!” Aoba said, wrinkling his nose in annoyance. “You know what? From now on, you won’t have to see my ass shaking in front of your nose, because I won’t enter this room anymore while you stay here! Granny or some of the kids can bring you your meals just fine! Goodbye!”

And he left with a bang on the door.

Noiz blinked, but after a moment he burst laughing. _‘Such a pity… I really wanted to see the whole biomechanical leg!’_

* * *

 

Of course, despite his bravado, Aoba was pushing his door open with a tray of food the next evening. His face was everything but happy.

“Alright, brat! It seems that everybody is too busy to bring you your dinner, so here you are!”

Noiz leaned back on the bed headboard with a lazy smile.

“Best use I could give to my last coins ever”, he commented.

Aoba squinted at him.

“I should have supposed that you would bribe the kids…” Despite his words, his tone was lighter than Noiz expected. His anger seemed to have deflated like a balloon since the previous day, and although he still seemed rather annoyed, he looked calm and relaxed. “I’ve brought you a radio. It works by the old system, not by coil waves, and people is using it now to transmit news about the war and the situation in every town.”

“Hmmm, nice, thank you.”

Aoba let him play with the device while he prepared the items in the tray.

“Granny told me to help you move your articulations so they won’t get rusty by lack of use. Have you done the exercises she asked you?”

Noiz only grunted as an answer. Without waiting for more, Aoba grabbed his knee and raised it from the bed.

“Cooperate a bit, will you? It’s heavy…”

The Captain let him move his limbs as he pleased without a complain. Everything that meant having Aoba more time in his bedroom was welcomed. When the time to do his arms arrived, Noiz asked if he should better take his top off.

“That won’t be necessary…” Aoba replied with a soft blush. _‘Why is he embarrassed now? What a ridiculous guy…’_ “You can move just fine like this, right? With your shirt on?”

Noiz nodded. Anyway, a moment later Aoba found himself rubbing the damaged skin of Noiz’s shoulder, where the artificial arm was linked to his flesh and his nerves. The young man gulped, and the Captain noticed a tremor on his shoulders.

“No need to be so tense about this… It doesn’t hurt”, Noiz muttered. He opened his shirt and took off his right sleeve, showing Aoba the whole length of his biomechanical arm. He flexed his elbow and his wrist. “See? Everything’s alright.” After a pause, where Aoba just stared at his arm in silence, he added: “Does yours hurt?”

“Sometimes. A bit. Or a lot, it depends.” He followed Noiz’ gaze, focused on his clothed leg, and finally sighed and unbuckled his belt. He unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down, until he could take his right leg completely out of it. Noiz’ eyes raked the shiny, silvery surface, only interrupted by the rounded form of his knee and his thin ankle. “I still remember how it hurt right then, when my leg went missing… It was there one moment, and the next it had vanished. I howled in pain until someone found me. Granny found me, and brought me home with her.”

“So, she’s not your real granny, related by blood?”

“No. I was living in an orphanage, and there was a gas explosion. Everything was destroyed in a moment.”

“So that’s why now you want to take care of these kids without families…”

He kept staring at that amazing silver limb, mesmerized, and he barely noticed his hand had joined his eyes in his admiration. His fingers dragged a caress on the metal, up the knee and beyond.

“Part of it, yes. I also want to help Tae in everything I can: she runs the soup-kitchen, the surgery, and takes in all the children who haven’t got anyone else. I owe her.”

“Hmmm… I think I understand.”

His fingers reached the top part of the metal, where it melted with a crust of irregular flesh, red and scarred, which turned into a pale and rounded hip barely two centimeters away. His thumb stroked the line where the metal and the skin joined, from Aoba’s hip to his crotch. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“Noiz”.

His name sounded like a breath. He raised his eyes and met Aoba’s strange honey gaze, letting his knuckles brush the front of the other guy’s underwear.

Neither of them dared to say a word, but the silence was charged and the question was almost palpable between them: ‘What the hell are we doing right now?’

“The food… The food is going cold,” Aoba stuttered, without moving.

“Come here.”

Noiz placed both his hands on the young man’s hips and pulled him closer, their eyes still anchored on each other’s. Aoba gulped loudly.

“What are you doing?”

His knees found the edge of the bed.

“You know, sometimes the Ruff Rabbit’s tank is so full and hot that we are afraid it will cause an explosion… Then, the best option is to let go some steam and everything goes back to normal…”

“Ha!” Aoba frowned and swatted away his hands. “The nerve you have! Let me go right now or I swear I’ll leave you your meals on the floor by the door from now on!”

“Why not? We find each other attractive…”

“How are you so full of yourself?!” Aoba smirked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Your face is like an open book, sir, no need to pretend now… As I was saying, there’s attraction, we aren’t committed to other persons, as far as I know, and we are in the middle of a war: the next air raid could perfectly let go a bomb on top of this house, and in a moment it would be like the orphanage of your childhood: just a mountain of rubble.” Aoba’s blinked and pulled a sad face. Noiz reached up and caressed his chin with a finger. “So we could just take what we are offered and spend some time together. Unless you are the kind of prude who is waiting for their one and only love, that is…”

“I’m not a prude!” Aoba frowned, clearly annoyed now, but he finally sighed and pushed down the remaining part of his trousers. “Alright, you are a conceited git, but I guess you are right after all.”

Noiz barely left him the time to straddle his middle before he embraced him and pulled him closer for a kiss. He would never confess to Aoba how many times he had daydreamt with those lips, and he couldn’t believe he was kissing them right then. They were even softer than in his dreams. His skin under the long sleeve t-shirt was pliable and warm, and he couldn’t get enough of it. And then, when Aoba’s warmth was wrapping him whole, his hand touched the cold metal just below his hip, and the contrast made him shudder in excitement.

If Aoba had any doubts, he seemed to have forgotten them: he slipped his wanton tongue inside of Noiz’ mouth and drank from him, swallowing his sighs and his saliva. When Noiz moved to the soft curve of his neck, he moaned and raised his head to give him more space. So it wasn’t surprising at all when Noiz’ hand caressed again the front of his pants and found his member already hard and hot. His fingers slithered inside and stroked the soft pubes and below that, the silky skin welcoming his touch. Aoba grabbed his wrist, and Noiz feared he was going to stop him, but that hand just stayed there, on top of his, as if the young man couldn’t decide if he wanted to keep doing whatever they were doing, or not. Trying his best to be convincing, Noiz sucked the side of his neck, hard, until the body in his arms shuddered and seemed to melt like hot chocolate. He moved to his earlobe, kissing it, and whispered softly:

“Hey… take care of me, too?”

Coming out of his reverie, Aoba opened his eyes again, without meeting his gaze, and took Noiz’ dick out of his pajama’s bottoms. He was careful, perhaps too much, but what disturbed Noiz was the fact of not being able to look into his eyes. He circled his fingers around Aoba’s member and pumped him with purpose.

“Haaaa..”

The captain used his free hand to grab the boy’s chin again and force him to lock eyes. Aoba’s gaze was half lidded and absent, but Noiz stared into those feline honey eyes and kissed him again, deeply, dominating the kiss. Aoba answered moaning and moving his hand up and down his length. Noiz leaned back a bit now and then in order to watch Aoba’s face, so erotic and open, a mask of pleasure. Excited, he pumped the guy faster, impatient to see him come undone in his arms. Aoba was doing his task rather ineffectively, though, his movements erratic and almost lazy, so it was clear he was going to come before Noiz.

“Hey, come closer, here!” he asked, pulling his lower torso until their pubis were touching.

Aoba’s metallic thigh was on top of his, brushing his hip with every movement, and Noiz couldn’t help but stroke it, fully aware of the fact he was caressing a piece of metal with no sensitivity whatsoever. But the contrast between that cold limb and the other one, so warm and elastic, slightly muscled and firm, was so good that it made him feel lightheaded.

He bucked his hips, meeting his length with his own hard dick, eliciting a rush of pleasure. He then grabbed both their members and started stroking them together. Aoba gasped and clutched the captain’s bare shoulders, one of them metallic, the other firm flesh.

“Noiz!”

“Is it good for you like this?”

“Yeah…”

“If you happen to have a condom, we could do a bit more…”

Aoba chuckled lightly.

“Don’t tempt your luck… I can still kick you out of here.”

“As if that was going to happen…” Noiz grinned and kissed him again, carding his long blue hair, stroking his scalp until Aoba was whimpering in pleasure.

It was a bit dry, but Noiz spat onto his palm before pumping them faster. Aoba looked as if he was on the edge for a while now, and he was becoming desperate. He rolled his hips, increasing the contact, and he suddenly made a strangled noise on his throat that put Noiz at his limit as well; he stared at Aoba’s face while they kissed, not wanting to miss a beat.

“Aaaah, Noiz!” the young man shuddered, and his good leg kicked the air.

Noiz pulled their erections harder, as fast as he could, until his hand was covered in come, glossy and sticky. He kept stroking them together, his eyes focused on the amazing, erotic face in front of his, lips parted in ecstasy, eyes tightly shut, delicate skin blotched. Then he finally let himself go, grunting once, twice, growling low in his throat, pumping them through their orgasms until there wasn’t a drop of come left inside.

Aoba let his forehead rest onto Noiz’ shoulder and tried to regain his breath. Noiz kissed his hairline and held his middle, in silence.

When they parted, the blue haired boy looked aside and moved from his position on top of Noiz, going to sit onto the bed while he put his jeans on again. Noiz wiped his hand in a paper tissue and chuckled. Aoba turned to look at him with a cautious expression.

“He, your face is so easy to read,” Noiz smirked.

“Oh, really? Then tell me what I am thinking about, genius”, he said, avoiding his eyes again.

“You feel ashamed of what has just happened, but in the other hand it felt really good and it was exactly what you needed right now, so you might want to repeat it soon.”

Aoba covered his blushing face with his hands and ran away from the room as fast as he could, chased away by Noiz’ laugh.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is supposed to be a one shot, but I had in mind a bit more of the story, so if someone is interested in reading it, I would write a second and last chapter gladly.


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